


want you in my room

by smithens



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Developing Relationship, During Canon, Emotional Baggage, Implied Sexual Content, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Morning After, Morning Cuddles, Non-Linear Narrative, Pillow Talk, Sexual Encounters Assumed To Be One Night Stands Because Of, Stylistic Prose, The Time-Honored Gay Tradition Of Unpacking All Of Your Emotional Baggage on the First Date, Thomas & Richard Being #Heterophobic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22379401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: The last night of the Royal visit, and the morning after.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 26
Kudos: 181





	want you in my room

**Author's Note:**

> **update 2020/05/25:** changed the titled AND the summary & i feel like five million times better about this fic now. lmfao. title from [want you in my room by carly rae jepsen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELzgEvk31dk)!
> 
>  **original notes:**  
>  this was supposed to be 1000 words with 500 words in the morning and 500 words at night and that obviously didn't happen. + this is super stylistic i was just sort of fucking around and then i was like "it'll be stylistic but STRUCTURED" and, see above, that obviously didn't happen. hope it's readable anyway. it is to me but i wrote it so i can't be the judge. also this didn't go where i thought it was going????????????????????? we'll say that i'm leaving it open ended for a sequel. am i really? we can't know that for certain!
> 
>  **content warnings/notes:** reference to canonical suicide attempt and conversion therapy, homophobia, implicit sexual content. this is like, teen rated, not more than that, but just to be safe.

"Good morning."

He can't remember the last time he heard those words spoken like that.

"Morning," he says softly, squeezing his eyes closed and then opening them again. Sun streams in from the window, casting the room in a pale gold light, illuminating the dew drops on the window; beside him is a man covered only by the bedsheet and only up to his hips, smiling.

Richard takes his hand and kisses it. They're lying on their sides, facing one another, as close as they can be without embracing or tangling themselves up. The bed's not exactly meant for two grown men.

"What time – "

"Quarter after six." 

Memories of the day before are so clear in his head he may as well be living them again… the phone call, the drive to York, waiting in the pub, dancing, the raid, jail.

Richard, tipping his hat at him in the street at some late hour.

Richard, touching a finger to Thomas's lips and smiling just like he is now.

And, back at the house, after a long drive and a slow walk… 

_"Sorry to say goodnight, if I'm honest."_

_"Are you that, Mr Barrow."_

_"Well, I…"_

_"If you're sorry to do it," Ellis murmured, setting a hand upon his cheek, leaning forward, "don't."_

"Quarter after six," Thomas murmurs. He should be jumping to his feet; he isn't. "How'd we get away with that."

"You're off duty, Mr Barrow," Richard says airily. "No one's come knocking."

_But it was Thomas who began the kiss._

_He could feel all of it: his heart beating rapidly in his chest, a shiver down along his spine; Ellis, with his hand on his cheek, fingers tussling his hair, lips soft against his own, yielding._

_He hadn't even locked the back door yet._

"I suppose that means we're lucky."

"Nice to be redundant sometimes, isn't it."

"Just this one time, I think," Thomas says.

He doesn't know how he should be feeling. Today is the last day of the visit, after all; in a few hours Richard will be gone and away, but they've only just started.

Or, and he knows this is more likely, they've just finished.

_"I do have a bedroom, Mr Ellis."_

_"Yeah," breathed Ellis (and Thomas thought, he wants this like I do, he wants me like I want him) "yeah, this isn't the best place – "_

_"This is the worst place," Thomas told him, laughing; maybe he hadn't sobered up after all._

_He kept his hand in place on his cheek and maintained eye contact even as he turned to lock the door._

"How much longer do we have before they send up a search party?" 

"Not long enough."

Richard laughs; it makes Thomas feel self-conscious, nervous. He's not shy — never has been, and he doesn't intend to pick up the habit now. It's embarrassing, though; because while he's not shy, he's not honest, either. This is unlike him.

He definitely left his head in the warehouse.

Thomas gives him a real answer, though, because he has to: "breakfast is at seven."

_They fell over one another in their rush to the stairs; Thomas caught Ellis in his arms and steadied him._

_Like dancing._

Richard, still with that easy, affable smile on his face, lets go of his hand to place his palm on his cheek. His touch is warm and tender, but Thomas shivers. "How long does it take you to dress?"

"I can be quick," Thomas murmurs.

_They weren't even halfway up the stairs before Ellis unpinned his collar and started taking his tie off, unfastening the buttons of his waistcoat._

_Mouth dry, Thomas asked, "what if someone sees you?"_

_"Then we've got bigger problems," he said, cocky._

_It was true, and they both knew it._

"You?"

"Record time, if I must."

Thomas laughs. "Must you now?"

They kiss.

_Once they were in the room, Thomas finished the job for him, undoing the buttons of his shirt with practised motions long since memorised. Methodical, the proper way. No matter how much he wanted this, he wasn't desperate._

_Well, he was desperate, he just wasn't planning on showing how much. Best to keep his head._

_Whatever was left of it._

_"You ever a valet?"_

_"Most butlers were valets at one point."_

_"You're not like most butlers."_

"That was the, er…"

Playful, Richard rubs their noses together; Thomas almost loses his thought entirely.

He knows that this means far, far more to him than it does to Richard, but he can't help what he's feeling. His heart is soaring.

_"Bed's small," Thomas said, after they'd finished stripping._

_As he'd expected, the man before him was a sight for sore eyes._

_"I'm accustomed to that," Ellis replied, a quirk in his lips, stopping just short of a smile. Thomas swallowed his resentment, ignored the envy in his stomach._

_He tried to convince himself he didn't have to be special for it to be good._

"That was the best night I've had in years."

"Sorry to hear it," Richard says, pulling away, looking mildly ruffled.

Thomas panics. "I meant – "

"I know what you meant, Thomas," gentle, reassuring.

_"I suppose you must tour often?"_

_"Do you really want to discuss work, Mr Barrow?"_

Uncertain, Thomas nods; he reaches to take Richard's hand in his own before returning the affection from earlier, pressing kisses to his knuckles, breathing against his fingers. Giving back.

He's lucky he still knows how to do all this.

Richard hums, contented. 

And then he grins. "Right, shall we make this the best morning?"

_He hadn't shared his bed — his own bed, at Downton — with anyone since 1910._

_Something about doing it now made him feel as new and thrilled and vulnerable as he had back then._

_"I wish you'd call me Thomas."_

_Ellis kissed him again, touched his tongue with his own, teased at his upper lip before pulling away. Seeing him smiling above him, still breathless, was enough to arouse all on its own. "If you'll call me Richard."_

They end up each with a leg between the other's, hips moving together and arms around each other's waists, still lying on their sides.

Thomas brings his hand lower on Richard's back.

What they do is the furthest thing from bloody circumspect.

_God knows he owed him this._

…and then they go back to lying in one another's arms, relaxed and satisfied.

"I'm a lucky man, and no mistake," Richard says. "You're the best thing that's happened in this whole damn tour."

Hearing those words makes him dizzy, like he needs to lie down.

_"You've said thanks enough."_

_"I don't think that I have."_

_"Don't let's make this about that."_

_"What shall we make it about, then."_

He's already lying down.

_Richard kissed his jaw_

_"Let's make it about"_

_his neck_

_"how I wanted you"_

_his collarbone_

_"from when"_

_his sternum_

_"you first showed me"_

_his navel_

_"to my room."_

"We should get out of bed," Thomas says eventually.

"Quite right, Mr Barrow."

"You have a long day ahead of you."

"Every day's a long one in our line of work," Richard replies, blithe and unbothered. "But I'll spend about four hours of it on a train, have some time to myself."

"They're sending you back alone, then?"

"Yeah, Lawton goes on to Harewood."

"Why her and not you?"

"I couldn't tell you, Thomas, I don't know the first thing about undressing a woman."

_Thomas kept his right hand upon Richard's head, petting his hair; his left Richard held, fingers intertwined, pressing their palms together, leather to skin._

_When the time came, returning the favour was almost as good as receiving it in the first place. Thomas found himself torn between drawing it out further and giving Richard everything he wanted all at once._

_And then Richard sighed and caressed the back of his neck, and the decision was suddenly very easy._

Thomas laughs. He's laughed so much over the last several days that his mouth is getting sore.

"Thought dressing was the more important part."

"Don't know the first thing about that, either."

And then they're silent.

_They held one another, after._

"I feel stupid," he says eventually. Stupid is probably an understatement, doesn't get the full extent across. He's been incredibly daft and that's all there is to it. "I don't know how I didn't realise about you."

"Wasn't shouting it from the rooftops, was I?"

"No," Thomas admits. "But – "

_Richard trailed his fingers up and down Thomas's chest, silent. If it weren't for that movement, Thomas might have thought he'd fallen asleep._

_Eventually he mustered up the courage to ask, "did you mean it?"_

_"Mean what?"_

"I kept my distance on purpose."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Richard laughs, caresses his cheek; Thomas, against his better judgment, curls up closer to him. "Matter of fact, I managed to get by without touching you until – "

" – what, you touched my lips?" 

_"What you said. About wanting me."_

_"Why would I lie?"_

"That's right."

"I hadn't noticed," Thomas says, truthfully. Why hadn't he? It would be the first thing on his mind under any other circumstances, a record playing in the back of his mind all the while, someone refusing to touch him, someone keeping his distance against all odds. Despite all of his years at Downton Abbey, he's still aware of it when it's happening, and it hurts the same every time. Even though he's used to it.

Maybe that's why he hadn't noticed, though. It was hardly out of the ordinary behaviour.

But then, Richard didn't refuse to touch him; he just… didn't. Without going out of his way not to; without shying away or flinching.

They came close, but… 

_"Some men do," Thomas said. He was careful to sound as though it didn't very much matter to him, but Richard saw right through it._

_He answered emphatically, "I'm not one of them."_

_Though he wanted to be, Thomas wasn't quite sure of that yet._

"That's what I'd hoped for."

"Why?"

"It'd've been a bit awkward if you'd noticed, wouldn't it?"

_"…did you have me figured out, then?"_

_"I had my suspicions, but no."_

_Thomas nodded._

Thomas bites his cheek and moves his tongue around his teeth, stalling, uncomfortable. He's not about to get out of bed to have a smoke, but that isn't going to stop him from wanting one. "Not unused to it," he says at last, after Richard's silence grows a little too determined for his liking. "People…"

_Richard continued, "and so you can imagine how it felt to discover you'd gone off with another man."_

_Heat rose to his cheeks. "I know it was foolish – "_

_But Richard only laughed; he pat Thomas on the arm. "You've apologised already, haven't you? Nothing to worry about now."_

He stops.

_"I got you in the end, after all."_

"Men," he corrects himself. "Men don't like to get too close."

_That he certainly had._

_"What made you suspect?"_

_Beside him, Richard shifted. He didn't say anything at first, only moved to lay his head upon Thomas's chest. He didn't mind it, not at all, but he was afraid — however irrationally — that Richard would hear his heart beating and know, somehow, that he'd already become attached._

_"Never met a normal man I got on with so well as you."_

"Normal men?"

"Er, yeah."

When Thomas looks up at Richard again, he's got that half-smile at his lips, the one that looks amused or mocking depending on where he's standing. He can't tell which it is at the moment; neither option is especially appealing.

_"You seem like you get on with everyone."_

"Best to specify the sort, Mr Barrow," he says. He trails his fingers down along Thomas's back. "The rest of us have different reasons for not touching."

_"Everyone gets on with me," Richard said. "There's a difference."_

Thomas doesn't say anything, but he settles once more with his head upon Richard's chest, and Richard rests his hand upon his waist and tugs.

Holding him.

"What was yours?" Thomas asks, as though he doesn't know the answer. As though he isn't thrilled at the thought.

_"I wish I had that problem."_

_"No harm in keeping your guard up, Thomas." Richard paused. "We have to, don't we, men like us — you and I have got different crests on our shields, is all."_

"I kept my distance," Richard says slyly, "because I _do_ like to get close."

_"I'm not as nice as you are," Thomas said quietly. "I try to be – "_

_"I wouldn't say I'm nice."_

_"I would."_

_"Well, I'm nice to you lot, Heaven knows the country folk don't deserve all we put them through, but Buckingham Palace is sink or swim, Mr Barrow. No man gets as far as I have by being nice."_

There is a suggestion in those words.

_Thomas rubbed his hand up and down along his arm, considering. The notion of being 'country folk' ruffled his feathers, but then, Richard had no evidence to the contrary, especially after what he'd gotten himself into the night before._

_He worried at his lips before speaking again._

_"Look," he began, "I'm not – I'm not like you."_

"I know the feeling."

"I think we all know the feeling."

Somehow, they're kissing again.

_Richard slowly sat up and looked at him. Thomas met his eyes, uncertain._

_"You don't know how many times I've been told to be nicer," he continued, "or to be… more like someone else, someone better than I am."_

Thomas breaks it, laughing, breathless. "We're going to get sacked." 

He should care about that — he _does_ care about that, but he's lost in the moment. Reluctant though he is, he forces himself to pull away, and then to get out of bed… well. He is too reluctant for that, just yet. He only sits up, knees to his chest, out of the covers.

Richard's still lying down, hands behind his head, looking up at him with a broad smile.

"Are we?"

_He missed the weight of him on his chest._

"If we stay here any longer," Thomas says.

"We stay here _much_ longer, yeah."

_"But no one's ever been very kind to me."_

_Why was he telling him this?_

_"More than one someone?" Richard asked._

_"A few in particular."_

_Thomas looked away. This was easy to talk about with Richard, almost too easy, but thinking about it was not exactly a wonderful sensation._

_He pushed himself up, sat with his arms wrapped around his knees. The back of Richard's wrist brushed against his ankle, and then stayed there._

_"Normal blokes, I imagine?"_

And wasn't that tempting.

_"You mean, normal as in boring, or normal as in – "_

_"Normal as in, half the servants in this house are bloody married, normal."_

"If only we hadn't waited until last night," Richard says.

_Thomas nodded in both understanding and affirmation._

_"Do you know how fucking queer that is? I swear, this is meant to be the one safe line of work for us…"_

'Waited' is an odd choice of words.

_"Odd choice of words there, Mr Ellis."_

_Richard laughed, shook his head. "There's the problem, then… it's not queer at all."_

He tells him so; Richard only laughs.

He has an excellent laugh to go along with his excellent everything else, and he is here, below him, in his bed; it's a glimmering summer morning and somehow they've got the entire bloody men's corridor to themselves.

For now.

"Wish I had you for longer," Thomas says.

His voice is small and vulnerable.

_Before Thomas could say anything more, Richard was kissing him again, this time slow and languid. As though they had all the time in the world with which to do whatever they pleased._

_It dawned on him that he'd kissed a man (and been kissed by a man) more times in the past hour than in the past ten years._

_"...you're the only one, then?"_

Richard reaches over to lay his bare hand upon his bare knee.

Thomas shivers, but not from cold.

_"Far as I know."_

_"How far is that?"_

_Far enough._

They meet one another's gaze. Richard is still beaming, looking at him the way some people look at – at bloody kittens, or something, a wide, unabashed smile that reaches his eyes, sparkling. It makes him feel the same way 'good morning' did, reminds him of what he's been missing for all these years. Reminds him how lonely he's been.

He didn't need the reminder, but he's got one, now, and he only yearns all the more for it.

_"Yeah," Thomas said. "Yeah, I'm the only one."_

"What are you thinking?" Richard asks, and Thomas startles.

What is he thinking.

Nothing he can possibly share, that's for certain.

_"I don't know how you manage."_

_A laugh came forth from his chest, harsh, raw. "I don't," he said. "I just sort of…"_

_He didn't know what to say. He supposed he did manage, in a way. Despite his best efforts, he was still alive; he had that going for him. He'd gotten as high up in the domestic hierarchy as he could ever hope to be. He was excellent at his job. People respected him, or they pretended to._

_But he wasn't happy._

He shrugs.

Richard takes his hand away, but only to brace himself as he sits up, and then he's got both of his hands at the back of Thomas's neck and is kissing him. Again. 

When he pulls back, Thomas can only stare, breathless; he presses his thumb to Thomas's lower lip.

And then he flops back down again, onto his back, and Thomas laughs.

"Would you like to know what I was thinking, Mr Barrow?"

Thomas raises his eyebrows. "I suppose you'd like to tell me."

_"I get by," he said finally, thinking of what Richard had said on their walk up to the house._

_"I'd go mad in your place," Richard said._

_Thomas wanted to tell him that he had already gone mad, and now he was clawing his way back out of it, but he didn't._

_He didn't say anything._

"I was thinking," he begins, "that I am very lucky to be in your bed."

"Is that right?"

He is thankful that in his voice there is no indication of his giddiness.

"And that I will be very sorry to leave it."

_"Is it a secret?"_

_"No."_

_"Who knows?"_

"You don't look as though you'll be doing that anytime soon," Thomas tells him, and there is a flicker of something unrecognisable in his face.

"No?"

_"Everyone."_

_"Everyone?"_

Thomas shakes his head. 

And when was the last time he was the reasonable one, in situations like these...

"Best be getting on, though," he says. He's bitter. This time it does show in his voice.

_Thomas could guess what he was thinking._

_"It's not in my head," he said. He tried to be sharp; he sounded pathetic._

_"I didn't say that it was."_

_"You were thinking it."_

_Richard said nothing._

_"You don't believe me," Thomas said._

_"What reason do I have not to?"_

_"Probably thinking I shouldn't be in the job I am, being… being as I am."_

Maybe too much, because Richard sits up all the way, then, not touching him — it's conspicuous now. Now that they've talked about it, now that Thomas has decided he likes to be touched. Now that Richard has said all he has.

Of course he can ruin a whole night and morning with five words.

_"With all due respect, Mr Barrow, are you calling me a hypocrite?"_

He starts to apologise, but then Richard is standing; he gives him an amused look before offering his hand.

Tentative, Thomas takes it.

"Don't have much time," Richard says casually. 

A fact they both ought to be well aware of by now.

Once standing, Thomas makes a noncommittal noise of assent and starts straightening out his bed linens. It would be in his best interest to launder them later.

"You in livery today?"

_And so Thomas told him, he told him everything — it was like the last seventeen years spilled from his mouth all at once, and he was just about certain that whatever he was saying wouldn't make any sense to someone who hadn't been there, but they'd already spoken about so much, the two of them, like they were, not normal or regular or proper, not those words that all meant the same thing when the right sort was saying them, because Thomas was realising once again that when he was actually with another man he didn't really want to be that, but like they were ordinary and unremarkable. How many times in the car had he said something but for Richard to say, "I know," or, "that reminds me of," or, "something like that happened when," and how many times had he said the same fucking thing and it had been true? It wasn't like he'd never met a man like him before, he had met plenty and shagged plenty at that, he'd left Downton before, he wasn't a fucking monk, it was just that he'd never been one with them in the way it felt like he was Richard, that there'd always been something else in the way, class or place or station or just plain circumstances, and if you only had someone for a night you weren't going to spend it bloody talking._

_Everything: from the men of his first season in London to the man of his second and the way he'd tried to end that one, when Mrs Patmore had found him out, Daisy and William and Jimmy and Ivy and Alfred and Andy, when he'd left Downton for somewhere even worse but with better people in it who weren't even in the world anymore, how he'd wrangled coming back and how he'd managed staying, O'Brien, America, the doctors in London, taking his razor into the bath. The worst parts of Downton and the worst things he'd done in it._

_He was bloody daft; if he hadn't put Richard off before…_

"Yeah," Thomas says, "may as well — why?"

"I ought to know these things," says Richard seriously, "as your valet."

_"Surprised you never put a match to this place."_

They stifle their laughter by kissing again.

_Thomas began to sit up, awed, but Richard tugged him back down, and then they were kissing._

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr as [@combeferre](https://combeferre.tumblr.com/)!


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